Particle Editor
by Bruce Wallace · in Torque Game Engine · 03/28/2002 (2:20 am) · 7 replies
Greetings,
Since RealmWars was announced I've been Interested In testing Ideas of magic. First I made a magic Arrow for the crossbow wich was kind of interesting. Used energy(mana) to fire and added some kick to the explosion with some splash damage. Then I was trying to figure out all the settings of particles to enhance the magic looking effect. Thats where I got sidetracked, I rememberd a particle editor made by a former Dynamix employee Drew "Mongo" Zilm, so I went and found it and tried to get it to work with tribes 2 to see how things worked. When that failed I started switching it over to torque and with some patience I've managed to get nearly everything working in torque(80% or so).
I have sent email to the author asking permission to contribute it to the community when I am finished "porting". But have no way of knowing if the email adress Is still good.
You can see an early version here.
Converting it to jpg made it a bit dark but you can get the idea of what it does.
If anyone at GG or someone reading this knows Drew Zilm and how to contact him please let me know so I know If I can give this to the community. If all else fails I will start over making a new one because I think it's something that makes it easier to see what effects you can come up with.
I have learned alot from this.
What I have left to do is figuring out saving and loading from/to files and then it's basically GUI work to make it less intrusive.
Since RealmWars was announced I've been Interested In testing Ideas of magic. First I made a magic Arrow for the crossbow wich was kind of interesting. Used energy(mana) to fire and added some kick to the explosion with some splash damage. Then I was trying to figure out all the settings of particles to enhance the magic looking effect. Thats where I got sidetracked, I rememberd a particle editor made by a former Dynamix employee Drew "Mongo" Zilm, so I went and found it and tried to get it to work with tribes 2 to see how things worked. When that failed I started switching it over to torque and with some patience I've managed to get nearly everything working in torque(80% or so).
I have sent email to the author asking permission to contribute it to the community when I am finished "porting". But have no way of knowing if the email adress Is still good.
You can see an early version here.
Converting it to jpg made it a bit dark but you can get the idea of what it does.
If anyone at GG or someone reading this knows Drew Zilm and how to contact him please let me know so I know If I can give this to the community. If all else fails I will start over making a new one because I think it's something that makes it easier to see what effects you can come up with.
I have learned alot from this.
What I have left to do is figuring out saving and loading from/to files and then it's basically GUI work to make it less intrusive.
About the author
#2
03/28/2002 (4:35 am)
I have sent mail to the email address that he had in the documentation, but I can't varify that it's still valid.
#3
03/28/2002 (2:57 pm)
Update: I have made contact with Drew,Seems that one way or another this editor will make it to torque =). I'll keep you updated. 
#4
Awesome work. Look forward to the final product :)
03/29/2002 (2:07 am)
Having played with particles a little myself I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to a more intuitive way of designing these.Awesome work. Look forward to the final product :)
#5
03/29/2002 (8:57 am)
Very cool! After having just spent a few hours tweaking the explosion and fire emitters for the Realm Wars demo, I'm certainly looking forward to this tool :)
#6
I am also looking into ways to add a new menu to the map editor that would allow you to create particle datablocks and add them to your map. I'm not sure how far I could go with this but my end goal before I move onto other things is to make it easy to make and test particle effects by visually tweaking them to the desired effect and with all possible flexability that manually editing the datablocks gives you.
Things left To do:
1.GUI - The current GUI is functional but not too pretty and takes up alot of room. I want to work on making it less intrusive. -medium(probably will be done after initial test posting)
2.Improving on original functionality to make all possible particle effects available -high(working on now and will continue with help and feedback)
3. Exploring and implementing new features if any are suggested or found.
4. Package it so minimal changes to the existing project is required.(mostly done but only tested on the RealmWars demo.)
5. Anything else that will make it easier to make cool particle effects.
6. There are still issues with some paths and saving but you can export to file.
7. Improving Stability and removing all possible ways that this thing can crash torque(It really liked to do that at first and still does once in a while when exiting torque == quite annoying)
All this said probably later today or early tommorrow I will post what I have so far to be tested and really would like feedback and help on how to make things work better and any problems that occur.(There will no doubt be alot of glitches but I am hoping this will help me fix them)
Big thanks to Drew for the editor all the hard work was done by him originally my work has just been nailing down small things that made it unusable in torque.(Requiring much tedious testing and many crashes heh)
Update: I have posted what I have so far Here It's mostly functional but very much still a work in progress. Any further fixes and updates will be uploaded to the same link. Give me feedback. Monster@zcalibur.com or post here.
03/29/2002 (4:07 pm)
It's pretty much functional now and soon i'll post a link to test it. There are a few things to finish yet first of wich is to determine the optimal max and min on the sliders that control the particles and emitters. Has anyone worked with particles enough to know the ranges that are usable for each setting? If so posting them would help me out alot.I am also looking into ways to add a new menu to the map editor that would allow you to create particle datablocks and add them to your map. I'm not sure how far I could go with this but my end goal before I move onto other things is to make it easy to make and test particle effects by visually tweaking them to the desired effect and with all possible flexability that manually editing the datablocks gives you.
Things left To do:
1.GUI - The current GUI is functional but not too pretty and takes up alot of room. I want to work on making it less intrusive. -medium(probably will be done after initial test posting)
2.Improving on original functionality to make all possible particle effects available -high(working on now and will continue with help and feedback)
3. Exploring and implementing new features if any are suggested or found.
4. Package it so minimal changes to the existing project is required.(mostly done but only tested on the RealmWars demo.)
5. Anything else that will make it easier to make cool particle effects.
6. There are still issues with some paths and saving but you can export to file.
7. Improving Stability and removing all possible ways that this thing can crash torque(It really liked to do that at first and still does once in a while when exiting torque == quite annoying)
All this said probably later today or early tommorrow I will post what I have so far to be tested and really would like feedback and help on how to make things work better and any problems that occur.(There will no doubt be alot of glitches but I am hoping this will help me fix them)
Big thanks to Drew for the editor all the hard work was done by him originally my work has just been nailing down small things that made it unusable in torque.(Requiring much tedious testing and many crashes heh)
Update: I have posted what I have so far Here It's mostly functional but very much still a work in progress. Any further fixes and updates will be uploaded to the same link. Give me feedback. Monster@zcalibur.com or post here.
#7
VERY cool.
Need some more particle art, need to play with this some more :)
03/30/2002 (5:03 pm)
Initial reaction is:VERY cool.
Need some more particle art, need to play with this some more :)
Associate Stefan Beffy Moises
Hopefuly you'll get his email address - GG guys, do you know him?